Releases: Online

Our #1 priority is continuous improvement of our EnergyCAP software through regular software releases, updates, and enhancements. We release new features and functionality on a regular basis so you can get more out of EnergyCAP.

*Maintenance Release not available to self-hosted clients; updates will be incorporated in a later release.

EnergyCAP Online 3.6.0 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online (ECO), version 3.6.0, is a maintenance release offering the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. EnergyCAP-hosted clients can access this new release as early as Wednesday, July 19 via web browser. The release includes a new database version (83). Self-hosted clients will need to consult the Installation documentation (https://docs.energycap.com/display/ECOINSTALL36/Downloads) and download the installation and script upgrade files.

EnergyCAP Online 3.5.3 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online (ECO), version 3.5.3, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. EnergyCAP-hosted clients can access this new release as early as April 8 via web browser.

[ECO-6123] - Logic for resolution of Bill Splits to the penny has been enhanced to ensure that the bill will balance properly.

[ECO-6125] - Demand charts are now displayed properly in the Benchmarking module.

[ECO-6126] - Cost Avoidance Trend charts now display all months of data when the Fiscal Year setting of “Begins With” has been selected within Accounting Settings.

EnergyCAP Online 3.5.2 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online (ECO), version 3.5.2, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. EnergyCAP-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via web browser.

New Features

Error Message - Negative and zero values allowed in Bill Splits, Service Charges – Until now, EnergyCAP has not allowed zero or negative values for bill split percentages or service charge values. However, due to some client scenarios where zero and negative values are useful, we have allowed this in setup sheets and in the user interface. Be aware that using these kinds of values may result in bills with zero or negative cost, use, etc.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-5817] Chargeback Processor – When there were chargeback scenarios with multiples of 100% (e.g. chargeback meter 1 receives a 100% split, meter 2 receives 100% split, etc.), the chargeback processor was incorrectly splitting the cost, assigning $0.00 or a negative of the source bill’s total cost. This has been fixed.

[ECO-6034] GL Field Lengths – When users had GL Subcode fields which were dropdowns and exceeded 255 characters in length, the template would fail to generate from Setup Manager. This has been fixed so that dropdown Subcodes will work no matter how many items they contain.

[ECO-6038] Accounting Period Selection – When multi-tenant users would set account period for bills, the account period value was being set incorrectly because of a mistaken database field used in a trigger. The trigger has been fixed so that the correct field is used.

[ECO-6085] Missing Bills in GHG – Through a client issue, it was discovered that the stored procedure which generates Greenhouse Gas reporting records was missing bills whose begin dates began while factor A was in effect and ended when factor B was in effect. This has been fixed so that the app will use the factor effective as of the bill’s end date.

[ECO-6088] Multi-Tenant Database – The owner ID was being hardcoded for all Cost Centers updated using the Cost Center Setup Update Sheet. For users with a multitenant database, this meant that when they updated any Cost Center, it was transferred from the correct owner to the default owner. This has been fixed so that the correct owner ID is now being used.

[ECO-6093] Audit Processor – The audit processor was excluding bills composed of only account-level line items. Such bills were being excluded from being picked for auditing. This has been fixed so that these bills will now be audited.

[ECO-6094] Rounding for Costs – When chargeback bills were generated from Submeter readings, cost values were not being rounded and often went to four decimal places. This has been fixed so that we are doing simple rounding to two decimal places for these cost items.

EnergyCAP Online 3.5.1 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online (ECO), version 3.5.1, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. EnergyCAP-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via web browser.

New Features

Error Message - Early in the development of EnergyCAP Online, a dialog (affectionately referred to as the "Oops Window") was added to notify the user when something went wrong. However, most of the time when the dialog presented, all data had been processed correctly, but something happened before the user interface could display it. Therefore, we have revised the display to make it less obtrusive and to provide more detail to assist Technical Support in resolving any problems. All errors are still being logged for EnergyCAP staff to review, but the user experience has been enhanced to allow work to continue without significant interruption.

Bill Import Improvements – After more than a decade, millions of utility invoices have been imported into EnergyCAP. With more and more complex client scenarios, some enhancements have been necessary to provide better control over how imported bills are created in the system. ALL existing bill import files and profiles will continue to work without modification. However, the enhancements listed below can be utilized moving forward if they help to resolve a specific import problem.

Consider Account Service Dates: Until now, an inactive account would always cause the bill import to fail. We now consider the service Begin Date and End Date of the account for all bills being imported. If the bill begin date falls within the service dates of the Account/Vendor, the bill can be imported rather than immediately kicking out.

Honor Account Alerts for imported bills: If a bill is being imported to an account that has an active alert, a Bill Message will be added to the bill. If the account alert is set to a "failed" status, the bill will not be imported and the kickout record will mention the active alert.

New Void/Preserve/Replace (V/P/R) Column: Much like the Actual/Correction/Estimated (A/C/E) column in all bill import files, this new flag works in conjunction with "A/C/E" to allow users to better control what happens with the bill being imported. See the HELP documentation on Bill Import for a complete explanation of the new functionality.

Adjust Bill Start Date for Imported Bills: For any bills that are being imported, if the begin date is one day after the end date of the previous bill, EnergyCAP will modify the start date to match that previous bill end date and make a note on the bill. This change has been made to accommodate some utility vendors that have begun creating invoices that do not share the same End and Start date. Modifying the start date of the imported bill when there is only a one-day difference is the most efficient method for correcting some date-specific logic in key EnergyCAP processes.

Definable Billing Period Logic: The Billing Period column can now be used to instruct EnergyCAP how to use the bill dates to determine which billing period a bill falls into. Nothing (null) or “!AUTO!” for this column uses the existing logic.

!START! assigns the billing period based on the month of the start date of the bill.

!MIDDLE! assigns the billing period based on the exact middle of the billing period without any of the logic that might ordinarily applied.

!END! assigns the billing period based on the month of the end date of the bill.

Use Meter Serial Number to Prevent Kickouts: During the bill import process, if there is a Meter Serial Number provided, it will be used to identify the specific meter and account to which the bill should be applied. Bill Notes: A new column is available for importing notes associated with a bill. These notes can be seen in the Bill Entry window, displayed in all bill lists, and/or viewed on the generated bill PDF file.

Bill Import Logging: A new activity log has been added to show the history of all bill import activities. 10,000 Limit removed: The bill import wizard can now process files that have more than 10,000 lines in the import file.

Interval Data Import: To accommodate import file formats from more utility vendors, some improved date/time options have been provided for Interval Data profiles.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-6003] - The Information-only "conversion factor" line item on calculated bills now displays the correct value when the bill is split to multiple accounts.

[ECO-6002] - Account memos can now be edited at any time

[ECO-5997] - Templates can now be created even if the sample bill has an account-level charge associated with it.

[ECO-5990] - The DAY05 audit has been updated to assist users in finding bills that have small, "zero day" gaps when a bill starts on the day after the previous bill ends.

EnergyCAP Online 3.5.0 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online (ECO), version 3.5.0, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. EnergyCAP-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via web browser.

New Features

Interval Data Import - EnergyCAP Online can now support import of interval data. The best features of the existing client-server process have been ported to the online version; ease of use has been enhanced, and speed has been improved dramatically (nearly 80x).

Creating Monthly Rollup Readings from Interval Data - EnergyCAP clients can now specify monthly channels that should have their reading automatically calculated from another, more granular, reading channel enabled for the same meter. This means that the EnergyCAP Chargeback Processor can now create the monthly readings necessary to calculate chargeback bills without clients supplying and managing that data separately. When coupled with the new Interval Data import feature, this is a very significant workflow improvement for clients who are actively creating monthly chargeback bills from imported interval data.

Import of Cost Avoidance Other Savings - For clients doing active Cost Avoidance management, particularly in the U.S. South and West, adding Other Savings each month has become a challenging and time-consuming routine. Until now, each of those savings had to be created by hand in the application, meter-by-meter. With a new update sheet found in Administration -> Setup Manager, Cost Avoidance Other Savings can now be managed as easily as other updates via a spreadsheet import process.

Meter Time Zone – It is now possible to specify and manage meter time zones in EnergyCAP Online. This will help ensure accurate processing of interval data, and sets the stage for future enhancements for customers with a global footprint.

Run Reports as PDF – This enhancement enables clients to create the report PDF directly, rather than running it first and then converting the Crystal report to a PDF as a separate step. This streamlined process will save significant time for clients who run a lot of reports and need to export them for analysis and archival purposes.

Global Currency - In this release of EnergyCAP Online, the Global currency set in EnergyCAP will now display correctly for most charts, bill lists and bill entry views. Future releases will continue to improve this currency display capability, which requires assistance from EnergyCAP to implement.

Default settings for Including Meters in Cost Avoidance - EnergyCAP has improved the process that determines which meters are automatically included in Cost Avoidance when they are initially set up. Most users will see very little impact, but for large clients with Cost Avoidance programs in active management, this change will significantly reduce the overhead often required when those meters are created. The new, default rules for any new meters, moving forward are listed below. There is a mechanism in place to override these new default settings if necessary. Work with your Implementation Engineer or EnergyCAP Customer Support if your specific situation rule modifications.

Never include Fire Protection, Recycling, Refuse and Telecom in Cost Avoidance by default

Only enable "Attempt Summer Weather Adjustment" if the commodity is Electric or Chilled Water

Only enable "Attempt Winter Weather Adjustment" if the commodity has a conversion factor to the global heating unit.

Account service end dates - Account Service dates (Begin and End) can now be managed from the Account Properties window.

[ECO-5980] - Template editor unit of measure fields are now editable when they should be.

[ECO-5984] – All template data fields are now visible for multi-commodity templates (i.e. water & sewer).

EnergyCAP Online 3.4.2 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online (ECO), version 3.4.2, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. EnergyCAP-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via web browser.

New Features

AP and GL Export Processor and API - Release 3.4.2 brings much-needed A/P and G/L export functionality to EnergyCAP Online. This feature will enable many EnergyCAP Enterprise Desktop users to move their AP processes (both manual and automated) over to the powerful EnergyCAP Online platform for better performance and long-term support. Clients that have had an A/P or G/L interface created by EnergyCAP, Inc. in the last 4-5 years have the potential to quickly move their processes online with minimal technical assistance from EnergyCAP, and there are many great reasons to do so!

Unexport - When there were problems with exporting a batch of bills, setting them as "unexported" so that the export process could be run again has been cumbersome using external processes. The Unexport functionality has now been moved into ECO. Added to the power of bill lists in EnergyCAP Online, this new functionality gives users a much more granular filtering mechanism to define an exact list of bills to be marked for export again. This is a huge process win for many clients who rely on the bill import process running smoothly, and need the tools to ensure that it does.

Export Bill Lists - The standard Workflow folders from EnergyCAP Enterprise (ECE) have been migrated into EnergyCAP Online (ECO) to assist in the transition of bill workflow processing for users that still need this functionality that is only available in ECE.

Universal Export Workflow setting for INI file - The new bill export for A/P and G/L in EnergyCAP Online has been based on a universal bill export profile. This profile is fully compatible with all A/P and G/L interface applications provided by EnergyCAP, Inc. through recent client implementations. This profile is now available for download within the application or from a new API, helping to ensure that automated export processes will continue to work even if updates to the profile are needed in the future. Going forward, this standard library for all client interfaces will provide a more standardized process for implementation and export automation.

"View Bill" - An enhancement has been added for all bill lists. Previously, if a user had the permission to edit bills the only option that had been available from bill lists for viewing the bill entry screen was "Edit Bill". Now all users have access to a view-only mode, regardless of their creation or editing permissions. The View Bill button will open a read-only version of the bill, bypassing any workflow warnings that may be associated with the bill edit process.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-5348] - Permissions Updates: EnergyCAP Online (ECO) didn't treat bill modification and workflow action permissions in precisely the same manner as the EnergyCAP Enterprise (ECE) Desktop application. This created issues for certain EnergyCAP Enterprise users who had created custom roles to restrict certain bill workflow actions. Release 3.4.2 updates all of the bill entry and workflow permissions in ECO to match the expected behavior from ECE. For users without custom User Roles, no differences will be observed.

[ECO-5550] - Vendor Role Names: The vendor role names in the Account Import and Update sheets did not match, even though both were translated into the database correctly. The update sheet has been modified to match the displayed values in the Account Setup wizard

[ECO-5649] - Spelling Error: An audit message created if the rate code does not match what is currently assigned to the meter has been edited to correct a spelling error.

[ECO-5663] - Auto-Group Issue Corrected: In some cases Place auto-groups could become empty temporarily when lots of building information changed, due to a database trigger issue.The root cause has been corrected, and will be released in a future database update. Clients experiencing the issue in the meantime can now receive assistance from Customer Service.

[ECO-5727] - Accrual Processing: A situation with the accrual processor that could occur when the end date of meter and the end date of the accrual period was the same has been fixed so that all accruals will now be created where possible.

[ECO-5729] - URL Update: Due to changes in the main EnergyCAP, Inc. website, the URL that displays recent changes in ECO within the Home dashboard widget needed to be updated.

[ECO-5741] - Bill Status: The user interface buttons that allow users to hold bills from export now clearly indicate the current state of the bill.

[ECO-5794] - eGrid: The upcoming release of new eGrid emission factors have updated the names of the factors. This could cause a conflict with earlier versions when trying to import the factors into EnergyCAP. An update script has been applied to 3.4.2 so that the naming conventions won't be a problem.

EnergyCAP Online 3.4.1 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online, version 3.4.1, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. ECI-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via web browser.

New Features

User Defined Fields Setup Sheets - Managing many User Defined Field (UDF) values has been a cumbersome process for many EnergyCAP users. EnergyCAP Online 3.4.1 can dynamically generate setup/update sheets that include the customer's user-defined fields for all four current objects; Place, Meter, Account, and Vendor. Using these setup/update sheets, clients can quickly import values for many objects across their EnergyCAP database while retaining the specific datatype for each field. The setup/update sheets can be generated from the Setup Manager section of Administration.

Add Meter Line item on Bill - In some cases, clients that create or edit utility bills by hand need a way to add a unique line item to the bill to handle an unusual charge. A new Bill Action menu item on the bill entry screen allows users to create one-time bill line items during bill entry, and to specify the relevant data for it. For bills with more than one meter, the process will prompt users to select the meter first.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-5548] - The Cost Avoidance Program to Date Cost Savings graphic now references the calendar period date instead of the fiscal period date.

[ECO-5590] / [ECO-5579] - When editing the unit of measure on a bill multiple times, the original 'information only' lines are no longer duplicated.

EnergyCAP Online 3.4.0 Released

The new release of EnergyCAP Online, version 3.4.0, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes. ECI-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via web browser.

Global Minimum Billing Period Setting - Clients can now set the earliest billing period that should be submitted to ENERGY STAR. This provides a convenient way for clients to prevent older (less reliable) data from being submitted to the rating system. ENERGY STAR ratings may not be successfully returned if there are gaps in the historical billing record. Setting the Global Minimum Billing Period appropriately can improve your success rate for ENERGY STAR building rating submissions.

Identifying Modified Building - The ENERGY STAR submission tab in EnergyCAP has been improved to show the relevant ENERGY STAR rating dates for each building to help identify which buildings would be submitted automatically based on modified data. The last date that a building received a rating and the last date something changed within a building, meter or bill associated with the building will both be displayed in the submission grid. This should allow users to quickly identify the state of all ENERGY STAR-enabled buildings.

Schema Updates - The latest round of ENERGY STAR schema changes have been incorporated into the EnergyCAP user interface. Users can now set the "Percent Occupancy" of a building and note which space types are ratable. Clients can apply this update, and future updates, from the ENERGY STAR submission tab in Bill Processing.

Improved Logging - The submission grid will now contain a link to a downloadable Excel file that logs each building that was submitted, the meters submitted, and the first/last bill billing period that was submitted with that meter. This log should greatly improve client and techical support debugging of ENERGY STAR submission issues.

EnergyCAP Report Designer - The forthcoming Excel plugin for ad hoc query and report design using EnergyCAP data requires installation of EnergyCAP 3.4.0 or greater. Contact EnergyCAP Sales (sales@energycap.com) if you would like to see a demo of the plugin and/or obtain pricing. EnergyCAP-hosted customers will receive first access to the plugin, which should be available in Q4 of 2015.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-1746] - Importing bills using the '!AUTO!:Commodity' function now assigns the charges to the correct commodity even when no usage data exists in the import file.

[ECO-5058] - The query response has been improved for large routes to prevent users from receiving timeout messages when attempting to load the routes.

[ECO-5343] - Date field validation and options have been enhanced for users editing imported bills.

[ECO-5410] - Custom templates created using the "copy" function will now work on the first try.

[ECO-5412] - Bill splits now include any bills that fall on the begin or end date of the chargeback version.

[ECO-5413] - Large Chargeback distributions had previously caused the display area to truncate portions of the visualization. This has been corrected and there is no maximum screen width limit for viewing a chargeback setup.

[ECO-5462] - Permissions have been updated throughout the application specifically in relation to viewing User-Defined Fields (UDFs). Some older user roles were not updating correctly, and users could view Places (for example) but might receive an error from the Place Properties tab because a UDF had a different "read" permission. Permissions are now fully harmonized with current available options in EnergyCAP. Future updates and improvements will give more granularity and control to administrators for these settings. All topmost permissions are still accounted for when viewing any data.

[ECO-5504] - Annualized use and cost is now accurate on the annualized dashboard and Group & Benchmarking charts.

[ECO-5524] - All French translations have been reviewed and updated throughout the application.

[ECO-5551] - Vendor and account information has been added as additional identifying information on the Chargeback master node in the Distribution Setup window.

[ECO-5574] - During the creation of Chargeback Accounts and Meters, functionality for selecting an existing chargeback meter has been temporarily removed to prevent users from associating a Chargeback Meter with multiple accounts. This functionality will be restored in a future release.

[ECO-5580] - Reports that are copied to the "Shared Reports" folder can now be removed, allowing users to more effectively manage the reports they share within their organization.

[ECO-5645] - Special Adjustments for a meter now retain records of the "Last Modified By" (user) and "Last Modified Time" to better support investigation into Cost Avoidance changes.

EnergyCAP Online 3.3.1 Released

A new release of EnergyCAP Online, version 3.3.1, offers the following new features, enhancements, and bug fixes.

New Features

Budgets Worksheet – The Budget Worksheet module will produce an Excel spreadsheet that allows users to model a new adjusted budget for each commodity and building. The budget can be adjusted by a percentage increase or decrease in weather load, floor area, and/or other miscellaneous factors. The sheet is calculated based on one year of data, with the end month of that year specified by the user. This 'phase 1' approach to budgeting will serve the less complex budgeting needs of many clients, particularly those with portfolios of less than 100 buildings. A more full-featured budget module is planned for a future release.

On Demand Search – An On Demand Search option in "Global Settings" allows clients to set the Global and Bill Entry search fields to require users to press the "Enter" key or to click the "Search" button to initiate the search. When enabled, this option suspends the instant search feature that is available for those fields. This new setting can be valuable for some large clients, since instant search can put an undesirable processing load on computers accessing very large databases with thousands of accounts. This user-configurable option provides one method of addressing near-term performance issues. PLEASE NOTE: During the first login after upgrading to 3.3.1, if your database has more than 5,000 accounts, this setting will be automatically enabled. It can be disabled at any time to return to instant search.

Batch Close Permission – For EnergyCAP Enterprise clients that rely heavily on the Workflow permissions to control bill entry and modification, some customized user roles permissions important to their processes behaved differently in EnergyCAP Online. The ability to close a batch is now dependent only on whether or not the user owns the batch. Previously the user also needed to have the ability to modify bills. No default EnergyCAP user roles (listed in Help documentation) will be affected by this change

Note: Some features are optional, and additional fees may be required to license them. Please contact us if you have questions about which features are included in your license.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-4186] - Filters for Account Code and Bill Period (Range) were added to the Setup Manager bill export.

[ECO-4454] - Commas in captions are now removed during Bill Export to prevent re-import problems.

[ECO-5124] - Adding a space to the meter search in Route Manager will no longer generate an error.

[ECO-5182] - The 'not equal' operator for filtering for bill export now works correctly.

[ECO-5183] - A bill export filter was added for Due Date.

[ECO-5262] - Group members can now be exported to Excel regardless of their active status.

[ECO-5291] - The GL code field is no longer available in the meter update window. This was done to prevent an incompatability between EnergyCAP Enterprise and EnergyCAP Online. A futue update will better solidify the needed functionality between the two systems.

[ECO-5295] - The closed batch warning is now generated correctly when an attempt is made to delete bills in a closed batch.

[ECO-5315] - A bill can now be approved using the Bill Actions menu on bill edit.

[ECO-5320] - To better assist custom Chargeback scripts, the Chargeback processor will now create bills when the rate unit cost is defined as $0.00.

[ECO-5321] - Setup Manager templates no longer have a limit on how many values will be displayed in a template dropdown field.

[ECO-5329] - Bills can now be exported in the Excel (.xlsx) format to make editing data (like billing period) easier without having to modify the cell formats. The Excel file can be reimported.

[ECO-5341] - Bill export now includes all bodylines with a unit of "Value".

[ECO-5368] - Importing Special Adjustments through Administration no longer resets the user-excluded data points on the Cost Aoidance Use vs. Weather charts.

[ECO-5370] - ObservationMethod and FromVendor flags are no longer reset when editing a bill.

[ECO-5376] - Bill Export will export all account level charges even when being filtered by topmost place.

[ECO-5382] - "information only" charges are no longer being incorrectly counted when creating a submeter Chargeback.

[ECO-5387] - The Chargeback Processor no longer creates bills when there are no line items.

[ECO-5388] - The Chargeback Processor can now create duplicate bills even if start date, end date and billing period are identical.

[ECO-5389] - When a multi-meter account has more than one bill per meter in a billing period, the Chargeback Processor will correctly process the individual bills rather than skipping additional bills with identical dates and billing periods.

[ECO-5390] - Special charges can now be added and viewed on a bill when the Bill Verify charts are visible.

[ECO-5450] - Bill kickout exports no longer contain quotes.[ECO-5451] - All references to the Getting Started video now direct the user to the video available on our online help site, docs.energycap.com.

[ECO-5452] - The Meter Group category now has an extended timeout to accommodate queries for a large number of meter groups.

[ECO-5453] - When the topmost place is an organization and there are no buildings listed below it, the Organization icon is now properly displayed.

EnergyCAP Online 3.3.0 Released

Release 3.3.0 will continue to support API Version 1 (V1). The next release (3.3.1 planned for summer, 2015) will support V1 and V2 APIs. However, release 3.3.1 will be the last release to support the V1 API, so clients using the V1 API (primarily the Authentication and Audit API) should begin planning for summer upgrades to their integrations in order to avoid service interruptions.

New Features

User-Defined Auto-Groups (UDAGs) – UDAGs will help users get the best visibility and access to their building and meter data. Creating groups of related buildings and meters has long been one of the best ways to get an efficient and effective view of energy and cost data through Groups and Benchmarking and Reports. But it's hard to maintain a group of buildings and meters over time, especially if the group members change because of meta-data that is modified over time. With User-Defined Auto-Groups, users can now create a group that is populated and maintained automatically using a comprehensive list of available filters, including meter and building User-Defined Fields (UDFs). This provides a new and incredibly powerful way for users to create groups that retain relevance and real value.

User-Defined Fields (UDFs) – A long-standing feature of the EnergyCAP Enterprise installed client, UDFs are now available in EnergyCAP Online to provide more usable data types, better validation, and a cleaner management interface. UDFs can be created and managed for Accounts, Meters, Buildings and Vendors.

24-month Rolling PowerViews – All monthly PowerViews have been modified to always show the last 24 billing periods. Previously the charts only displayed the current year and previous year, which reduced the value of the chart. The new 24-period rolling charts enable convenient visual trend analysis for cost, use and unit cost throughout the application.

Bill Entry Verify Charts – The bill entry window has been enhanced to display the charts previously shown on the “Verify” tab if the monitor has enough width to display them. The charts will update as data is entered or modified, providing a visual "fat-finger audit" for checking data entry.

No More Mixed Units of Measure – EnergyCAP now enforces one Unit of Measure (UoM) for each meter. The UoM is determined by the Use and Demand unit of the currently active template. In the past, users could import bill histories with different units of measure over time. This may have been due to vendors switching their billing units, bad template selection for historical data, or simply an incorrect unit on an imported bill. This presented problems for reporting and conversions to common and global units of measure for advanced Cost Avoidance functionality and bill audits. To resolve these issues, EnergyCAP will now enforce one Unit of Measure for each account/meter. If a new UoM is truly needed, when a new template is assigned, EnergyCAP will prompt the user to convert the bill history to the new native UoM. A copy of the original Use and/or Demand line item will be saved to the bill as a non-reportable value for record keeping. A list of current UoM mismatches is now available in the UoM Administration software interface, as well as a method for resolving them. Once mixed unit issues are corrected, some processes such as Cost Avoidance, should be run again to ensure the best data was used for all analysis.

User Last Login – The last date and time of a successful user login is now stored and displayed in the Users table in Administration. This is useful to determining user engagement and problem resolution when data is modified.

Bill Import Errors (kickouts) Export – A small but useful enhancement allows Bill Import Errors to be exported as an EnergyCAP Advanced Bill Import format Excel file for fast editing of many bill import errors. This is most useful when many bills don’t import because of an incorrect mapping that can easily be fixed in a unified import file rather than modifying and re-importing errors one at a time through the EnergyCAP user interface.

Bill Import Errors Bill Image – In conjunction with the ability to export a list of Bill Import Errors, users can now open a link to the bill image if using “Control Code” as the storage location for the image name. Until now, bill images were only linked to bills that were successfully created from an import. With this update, both the Bill Import Error table and the detail dialog for the specific kickout will display a link to the bill image for easier problem resolution.

Accrual Processor – A completely new Bill Accrual Processer has been added to EnergyCAP Online. Learning from the original Accrual Processor in EnergyCAP Enterprise and focusing on more real world use cases, the Accrual Processor has been designed to meet the needs of EnergyCAP clients that interface with in-house Accounting departments. If you think using an Accruals module would benefit your EnergyCAP and Accounting workflow, please contact EnergyCAP Sales for more information and to schedule a demo.

Accounting Periods – Enhancements have been made to the way Accounting Periods are handled in EnergyCAP to satisfy the needs of clients that have 13-month accounting cycles per year and clients that have accounting cycles that follow a specific, user-defined calendar each year. If these are features that might help improve the way EnergyCAP interfaces with and reports to your accounting department, please contact us for more information and to schedule a demo.

Note: Some features are optional, and additional fees may be required to license them. Please contact us if you have questions about which features are included in your license.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-2970] - No unit of measure is displayed on PowerViews that have zero data.

[ECO-4439] - If 'Strong Password' is checked when creating a user, 'Password Change on Next Login' is also selected.

[ECO-5148] - Client created weather stations can now be assigned to a building.

[ECO-5161] - Use/Cost per Day chart displays Use unit correctly for Use data

[ECO-5234] - Account/Meter Association can be removed or end-dated.

[ECO-5238] - Audit Group description has a max length of 255 characters.

[ECO-5239] - Account/Meter wizard now displays all meters in the existing meter tree display. [ECO-5249] - Route grid can be exported to Excel.

[ECO-5279] - Group charts filter by commodity correctly for both User defined and Auto Groups.

EnergyCAP Online 3.2.3 Released

Chargeback Distribution Setup Enhancements - After many successful implementations of complex Chargeback Distributions by EnergyCAP clients in 2014, numerous usability improvements have been made to the creation and editing of distributions to allow users to work as efficiently as possible. The most valuable updates include:

Additional charges can now be applied at both the Account and Meter level

Users can cancel the loading of a large distribution if necessary

Distributions can now be searched easily to find the specific account/meter quickly, even if the zoom level is set to 25% on a large distribution

Editing can now be done per-branch of a Distribution, greatly improving the efficiency of making updates

Users can now cancel the editing of a Distribution without incurring the penalty of having to reload the entire Distribution again, in most cases

There is now a "Process Chargeback" button at the top of all Distribution setup screens to allow users to quickly process the Account/Meter of that specific Distribution without having to filter it from the Bill Processing Chargeback wizard

Customers & Chargebacks Tree Options – The Customers & Chargeback tree has new display options to more easily group hundreds or thousands of Chargeback Distributions.

The Buildings node has been eliminated to remove duplication of data displayed in other nodes

The Distribution node can now be displayed by Master Meter, by Cost Center tree, or by Buildings and Meter tree. The latter two options honor topmost permissions to reduce the number of meters displayed, by only showing the meters that a user has direct access to based on their topmost permission settings.

Bill11 Audit – This is a new audit that compares the total cost of the bill to a line item specified by the user, which is particularly useful as a "sanity" check for clients that utilize third party services to scan or import bills and provide a total cost as found on the bill to ensure the individual line items were recorded correctly.

Customer Link on Account Properties – The Customer listed on the Account Properties page can now be clicked to locate that Customer in Customers & Chargebacks.

[ECO-4466] - GHG Factors are linked when Chargeback Meters are created

[ECO-4935] - During Bill Import, RATECODE is now compared to Rate Info (a field the user can edit through the application)

[ECO-4983] - When editing a meter, if meter code is not unique, a red validation flag is presented on the screen.

ECO-4985] - Two identical channels cannot be added for a meter and the proper red validation flag is presented on the screen with details of the error.

[ECO-5097] - Chargeback Processor continues to run when an unhandled exception is encountered and the error is logged.

[ECO-5128] - When all bill headers are being utilized, the Save button on the Create Batch wizard is no longer partially hidden.

[ECO-5150] - PowerViews displayed within Customers and Chargebacks have been updated to ensure the correct Account/Meter data is displayed in all circumstances

[ECO-5191] - Submeters using Specified Rate can now be added to an existing chargeback setup without error.

Cost Avoidance Notes

There are several improvements in this release (3.2.3) which may cause some cost avoidance results to be updated to more accurate values. Improvements include:

A bug was fixed in recurring partial-year Other Savings. When the start month exceeded the end month (an August through May recurring cycle, for example) the Savings was excluded from all CAP reports that include Other Savings, resulting in lower than actual reported Total Savings.

The new processor handles missing weather data more appropriately. Although cases of missing weather data are rare, the previous method was to treat missing weather days as no loss/no gain days. The improved processor fills in small missing weather gaps by estimating the missing weather days based on the average of the adjacent days. Cost avoidance will increase if the resulting adjustment is positive, and cost avoidance will decrease if the resulting adjustment is negative.

A comprehensive review of all 14,000 weather stations found that due to a slight glitch in source weather data, about 1/5th of all stations were missing weather data for July 28 and/or July 29, 2014. These days have now been corrected, so you may see slightly different cost avoidance values for weather-adjusted electric meters in July 2014. In most cases the cost avoidance change will be under 2-3% for the month, depending upon how much warmer or cooler July 28 and 29, 2014 were compared with the same days in the baseline year.

The Calculate Savings processor will now create a Baseline if none exists at the time. (This should seldom be encountered but may exist in the case of a new meter or new building.)

If you are an active Cost Avoidance user go to Bill Processing - Cost Avoidance - Calculate Savings and click on the Reprocess Baseline button (set no filters). This will ensure all cost avoidance reports reflect the updates in release 3.2.3.

EnergyCAP Online 3.2.2 Released

Chargeback Setup Sheets - A new set of Setup Sheets have been added to allow users to quickly set up and edit large Split Bill and Submeter Distributions. These sheets significantly reduce the effort needed to manage large, flat Distributions, particularly during initial implementations.

The new Setup Sheets include:

Channel creation

Customer creation and updating

Master meter creation and versioning

Split bill distribution creation and updating

Submeter distribution creation and updating

Bug Fixes

[ECO-4478] - Addressed the 03.02.01 and 03.02.05 upgrade scripts so they will not be retriggered on every login

[ECO-4929] - Setup sheet country columns are no longer case sensitive

[ECO-4933] - Chargeback service widget can be changed from "percentage" to "fixed," and the display will be correct when switching back to read-only mode

EnergyCAP Online 3.2.1 Released

Account Alerts – Account alerts can now be created from the Account Properties dialog. Although EnergyCAP Online has honored these bill entry alerts if they were created in EnergyCAP Enterprise, users have not been able to create them directly in the Online interface. Alerts of “Pass” will simply provide a dialog to users attempting to enter or view bills for an account without hindering bill entry. Alerts of “Fail” will provide the message dialog but disable the “Save” button on bill entry. Each message can be up to 255 characters in length.

Account Alerts Date Logic Changes – Account Alerts are now displayed based on the dates of the bill being entered. Previously account alerts that were displayed during bill entry used the client computer's current date to determine if the alert should display. While this had a similar affect during bill entry, using the system date prevented any actions on bills for that account, even historical bills. Using the bill dates gives more flexibility to the end user to determine what bills should produce a warning, pass or fail.

Audit Group Filters – A long-standing request to allow more flexibility with Audit Group filters has been fulfilled with this release. When multiple Audit Groups are selected to run, new choices are available to help fine-tune how filters are applied for that selected run. This gives users the flexibility of having groups filtered for specific purposes (by commodity, total bill cost, etc.) while additionally applying useful filters at the runtime.

Bill Entry History Tab – The History tab on the Bill Entry dialog has been enhanced to display meter-by-meter bill details, rather than simply account-level bill details. A tab will be shown for each meter associated with the bill and adds in consumption-type data to better identify issues and trends compared to the current bill. Any visible bills with the same Billing Period will also be highlighted to enable quicker spot checks.

Bill Note – Users can now add or edit a brief note on individual bills using the bill entry screen. The bill note is also a new column available for display on all bill lists and will be added to the EnergyCAP generated bill PDF if it exists. Bill notes are not intended to replace the extensive audit capabilities of EnergyCAP or the functionality provided when adding bill messages. Notes are intended to be brief observations about something dealing with a specific bill in free form type.

Bill Split Void/Delete – Any bill designated as a "master" bill in a Chargeback Distribution bill split will now prompt the user if the master bill is Voided or Deleted, whether that action should be applied to the children bills resulting from the master. If the master and children bills states are not kept in sync, the Chargeback processor may produce unexpected results.

Building Floor Area – Building floor area effective dates can now be edited and deleted as required to correctly represent floor area changes over time.

Cost Avoidance Administration Permission – A new permission has been added which limits the ability of a user to modify weather tuning (balance points, baseline settings, and outlier deletion) and global Cost Avoidance settings (including Global Meter Update) that would alter historical calculations unintentionally. The new permission will automatically be given to the EnergyCAP standard User Role of “Administrator”. If other User Roles require the ability to tune Cost Avoidance weather settings or global values, those Roles will need to be modified using EnergyCAP Enterprise. If your license does not allow access with the installed client to make these changes, please contact support for assistance.

ENERGY STAR Submissions – Submissions to ENERGY STAR will now include all buildings that have new or updated data, regardless of any schema changes that may have been applied. In the past EnergyCAP would not submit buildings that were effected when new or updated properties were released by the EPA for various building types. In the past, trying to submit these buildings presented significant problems with the automated interface provided by ENERGY STAR. These restrictions are no longer a problem when submitting buildings. The submission data grid now shows a column which indicates if a building has properties that need to be reviewed, but the building can still be submitted.'

Template Assignment Dates – Templates assignment dates can now be modified within the Meter Properties tab. Until now, users could only assign new templates which often resulted in the wrong Begin Date being assigned with no mechanism for correcting it. These updates ensure that date ranges are correctly honored while allowing users to correctly setup their bill entry templates.

Bug Fixes

[ECO-1231] - When adding an address, if the zip code verification service is not accessible, a warning will appear

[ECO-2924] - Commodity icons were added for several less used commodities

[ECO-4342] - ENERGYSTAR schema update button is visible on the ENERGYSTAR submittal page if the schema is out of date

[ECO-4352] - Numerous improvements have been made to the Chargeback Processor to better accommodate unique split bill distribution setups when the processor is run without any filters. The logic that determines what bills to distribute was not correctly identifying bills entered in the past and incorrectly marking bills as split when children bills from a previous attempt were not voided or deleted from the system.

[ECO-4356] - A preexisting weather station currently assigned to a building will not change when adding or editing the postal code. The weather station must be manually set after initial setup.

[ECO-4368] - Other Savings calculates correctly when the begin month to end month range crosses over the 1st day of a new calendar year.

[ECO-4373] - When setting up a submeter chargeback distribution with a service charge type of consumption charge or demand charge, the processor generates bills and logs errors appropriately.

[ECO-4415] - A multi meter account can have a distribution on each meter.

[ECO-4416] - Chargeback distributions with an account charge on a source bill will be split evenly across all generated split bills.

EnergyCAP Online 3.2.0 Released

ECI-hosted clients can access this new release immediately via your web browser. To learn about the improvements in this release, watch the video..

New Features

Chargeback Submeter Distribution – Now you can create bills from monthly submeter readings through Customers & Chargebacks. This new feature replaces Calculated Accounts in the installed EnergyCAP Enterprise client. Many of the complex submeter billing needs that were previously handled with specialized, hard-to-maintain scripts can now be easily created through the new intuitive interface. The update includes many enhancements to meet popular client requests. The feature clearly shows how bills are being calculated, and provides easy logging and “undo” capabilities. Coming soon for current EnergyCAP Enterprise clients using Bill Splits and Calculated Accounts: a converter to help you update legacy setups into usable Customers & Chargeback distributions.

Meter Reading Routes – Routes have been integrated with the submeter chargeback functionality. Users can now manage membership in routes and enter monthly meter readings.

Rate Creation – An integral part of creating internal chargeback bills is the ability to create simple rates for use with many chargebacks. EnergyCAP now allows you to create simple rate structures, specifically intended for use when creating submeter chargeback bills. These rates are compatible with EnergyCAP Enterprise, but include new properties unique to EnergyCAP Online that allow specific meter and account charges to be added as part of the rate structure. This functionality is the foundation for a future, more full-featured rate engine.

Channel Management – You can now manage Channels in EnergyCAP Online! The setup process has been designed to assist users in selecting the best settings for various channel types while preventing selection of incompatible options. While channels of any type can be created and edited, only monthly reading channels are currently used in EnergyCAP Online as part of the submeter chargeback processor.

Target Line Comparison – This new validation feature allows users to display target lines on select use, cost, and GHG charts for Buildings and Meters. The target lines display values from a user-selectable year of prior data. The values can then be increased or decreased to set the effective target (most often a reduction goal of some kind). Each client that purchases this new feature can determine which charts will display the target line, what the multiplier for each goal is, and what label to use for the chart legends.

Custom Audits – Users can now add “Custom Audit 01 (CS01)” (referred to as “Audit 52” in EnergyCAP Enterprise) to new and existing audit groups. The parameters allow a user to specify a stored procedure that will “audit” a bill and execute custom logic as part of an EnergyCAP implementation. Because of the inherent power of working directly in the database, only EnergyCAP-provided audit stored procedures are supported. This functionality provides a path forward for some EnergyCAP clients who wish to significantly reduce the need for, or completely move away from, the installed Enterprise client. Talk with customer support, or your implementation project manager, about how you may be able to improve your workflow using EnergyCAP Online!

Validation Manager – EnergyCAP Online 3.2 comes with a new license validation system. Beginning with this release, any new contracts or renewals will receive an updated validation code which will soon be required to use EnergyCAP Online.

Custom Logo Upload – The Global Settings for changing the logo that is displayed within the application now requires users to upload an image. Previously the image had to be publically available from a website URL. Any previously-set images will continue to be used until a new image is uploaded.

EnergyCAP Online API – The first officially supported public release of the EnergyCAP Application Programming Interface is included with EnergyCAP Online 3.2. The API represents a significant amount of effort that lays a solid foundation for future development and integration. The public API consists of any EnergyCAP-documented API functionality. Use of any other web services with the EnergyCAP application will not be supported for client use or as part of custom integrations. Only the public API will be maintained, versioned, documented and deprecated going forward. API Documentation: http://[EnergyCAP Server]/api/docs – API Overview SlideDeck: [http://www.slideshare.net/EnergyCAP/catalyst-apidemo2014-2]

Note: Some features are optional, and additional fees may be required to license them. Please contact us if you have questions about which features are included in your license.

Bug Fixes & Enhancements

[ECO-2156] Chargeback accounts are now included in manual bill entry search.

[ECO-2406] Chargeback Distributions can be navigated using keyboard commands.

[ECO-2544] When setting up a chargeback distribution, deregulated accounts can now be distinguished by the displayed vendor code.

[ECO-2960] Special Adjustment values can now include up to four decimal places.

[ECO-2992] Meter Serial Number is now a valid search criteria on the main search.

[ECO-3032] When creating the first Chargeback meter, the place tree now draws all available places instead of just places currently attached to chargeback meters.

[ECO-3292] Report paging has been improved significantly while also maintaining the exported report name.

[ECO-3584] The Show Inactive Accounts display option will persist for Buildings & Meters and for Accounts hierarchy views.

[ECO-3904] All meters in Cost Avoidance now default to “Adjust by Floor Area” being unchecked. This setting is usually not needed and can negatively effect CA results incorrectly when applied by default.

[ECO-3905] The Special Adjustments processor will now continue to process correctly after a “fixed

[ECO-4002] The EUI calculation has been updated so that changes in floor area are correctly used in calculating the BTU trend line.

[ECO-4019] ImportID has been added to the meter properties dialog during editing and creation of meters. ImportID is a required field when using interval data imports.

[ECO-4036] The ImportID has been added as an optional column in the Setup Import and Update sheets for a meter.

Known Issues

Chargeback Processor Logs – Enhancements to the logging features of the Chargeback processor resulted in old logs disappearing from the user interface. A future release will restore these older log entries, although more limited information will be available for these entries since enhancements were made after they were created.

Web API Documentation Sample Data – The API documentation is very thorough and should have everything needed to allow development resources to utilize it for integration purposes. However, the sample JSON data provided in the documentation is currently auto-generated based on data type which might not always provide the best sample data. The structure of the JSON is valid and can easily be used as a template to modify and utilize. More relevant JSON samples will be provided with future releases.